e to maintain a fleet in the
Black Sea. To forbid the Tsar to put an ironclad on the sea which washes
his southern coast was a far more drastic limitation of the inalienable
rights of an Independent International Sovereign State than the
provision that treaties affecting the interests of another Power should
be subject to the veto of that Power, but no one has protested that
Russia has lost her international status on account of the limitation
imposed by the Treaty of Paris. In like manner Mr. Reitz argues that the
Transvaal, being free to conduct its diplomacy, and to make war, can
fairly claim to be a Sovereign International State. The assertion of
this fact serves as an Ithuriel's spear to bring into clear relief the
significance of the revival by Mr. Chamberlain of the Suzerainty of
1881. Upon this point Mr. Reitz gives us a plain straightforward
narrative, the justice and accuracy of which will not be denied by
anyone who, like Sir Edward Clarke, takes the trouble to read the
official dispatches.

I turn with more interest to Mr. Reitz's narrative of the precise
differences of opinion which led to the breaking-off of negotiations
between the two Governments. Mr. Chamberlain, it will be remembered,
said in his dispatch he had accepted nine-tenths of the conditions laid
down by the Boers if the five years' franchise was to be conceded. What
the tenth was which was not accepted Mr. Chamberlain has never told us,
excepting that it was "a matter of form" which was "not worth a war."
Readers of Mr. Reitz's narrative will see that in the opinion of the
Boers the sticking point was the question of suzerainty. If Mr.
Chamberlain would have endorsed Sir Alfred Milner's declaration, and
have said, as his High Commissioner did, that the question about
suzerainty was etymological rather than political, and that he would say
no more about it, following Lord Derby's policy and abstaining from
using a word which was liable to be misunderstood, there would have been
no war. So far as Mr. Reitz's authority goes we are justified in saying
that the war was brought about by the persistence of Mr. Chamberlain in
reviving the claim of suzerainty which had been expressly surrendered in
1884, and which from 1884 to 1897 had never been asserted by any British
Government.

Another point of great importance is the reference which Mr. Reitz makes
to the Raid. On this point he speaks with much greater moderation than
many English critics of t